F&G fixes gaze on Pend Oreille walleye

SANDPOINT — A rudimentary survey of walleye in Lake Pend Oreille is turning up slightly more of the toothy fish, but the Idaho Department of Fish & Game says it’s still too early to draw any rock-solid conclusions.

For the past several years, a commercial fishing contractor retained by Fish & Game has been setting up a gill net overnight at the mouth of the Pack River to gain some insight on the influence of walleye in the Pend Oreille.

Jim Fredericks, the department’s Panhandle region fisheries manager, said a net installed at the mouth of the river in the first week of April turned up 25 nice-sized walleye.

“It was a few more than what we caught last year, but I’d hesitate to say that it really reflects any sort of trend,” Fredericks said.

The netting at Pack River is an offshoot of gill netting being conducted in the lake to suppress lake and rainbow trout populations to blunt predation of kokanee. Fish & Game hopes to temporarily reduce the number of rainbows and permanently reduce the number of lakers so their prey can flourish.

The walleye caught earlier this month reportedly averaged between 4 and 8 pounds. Fredericks said few juvenile walleye are turning up and there are no indications the population is rapidly expanding.

“The walleye that we do handle — by and large — are big, healthy, mature adults. You get the sense that it’s a very, very low-density population and it’s certainly not exploding,” he said.

There is anecdotal evidence walleye are also concentrating around the mouth of the Clark Fork. An overnight net has not been set up there in spring because there’s too much debris coming down the river to keep the net fishing.

Of particular concern to Fish & Game is the potential impact walleye could have on rainbow and cutthroat trout, in addition to endangered bull trout emerging from the Pack and Clark Fork rivers. Walleye are piscivorous, which means they like to eat other fish.

However, there is no indication so far that walleye pose a threat to those fish species, according to Fredericks.

Some anglers suspect walleye are hammering kokanee more than lake and rainbow trout, but Fredericks said there is no evidence of that either.

“I don’t think walleye are going to play a role in that whole equation because while I’m sure that they will eat kokanee and would eat kokanee when they have the opportunity, they’re habitat overlap is going to be very, very minimal,” Fredericks said.

Some anglers also contend that walleye, which are not native to the Pend Oreille system and entered it through the Clark Fork, will function as the fishery’s salvation. But Fredericks said such speculation is “optimistic.”

“In some lakes, walleye populations tend to take off and really get going. In others, they kind of plug along at a very low density,” he said. “We hope they’ll continue to plug along at low density in (Lake) Pend Oreille.”